02-07-2014, 09:12 PM
Since Steam has finally integrated reviews nicely into the community, I figured it's only fair for everyone to share their opinions on some of the smaller games that have come out and don't really deserve their own thread or games that people didn't manage to get around to when they came out.
Just post your review and/or link to the steam review.
I'll start us off with a two games I bet recently:
Gone Home
The Cave
Just post your review and/or link to the steam review.
I'll start us off with a two games I bet recently:
Gone Home
Quote:Let's get this out of the way: Gone Home is an interactive experience, much like The Novelist, The Stanely Parable, and other games of such caliber. Unlike a game like The Stanely Parable, though, Gone Home doesn't have much of a point to its narrative other than being gaming's version of oscar-bait; It's 90% story and 10% playing detective.
The exploration of the game is detailed nicely, with every room filled with scraps of the story for each family member. This is betrayed by the games audio logs from Sam (your sister) who just flat-out explains the reason for notes and such and kills any desire for discovery. Instead, it encourages clicking and examing every object until the next audio log plays. It's disappointing considering the amount of effort put into the detail.
What annoys me about the narrative is that if the same story had been told with a heterosexual couple instead of lesbians, it'd be knocked for cliche romance-novel writing and predictable endings.
Bottom Line: Is Gone Home a good game? Sure, it's worth exactly one playthrough. Is it worth $20? Absolutely not. Wait until a sale or humble bundle for this one. It's 3 hours at its very, very, very most.
The Cave
Quote:The Cave is such a mixed bag I'm honestly not sure if I can give it a recommendation or not. I was equally frustrated by the game for as much as it charmed me.
The Cave is a hybrid point-and-click adventure paired with the mechanics of a platformer. You're given a choice of seven characters to choose from (An Adventurer, Knight, Scientist, Time-Traveler, Hillbilly, pair of Twins, and Monk), each of which can change the journey of your playthrough.
The art design of the game is lovely and the voice work is doubly so. It has that Monkey Island charm that Ron Gilbert is so well-known for and it shows through the many humorous spouts of dialogue from the narrator and various people you meet in the cave. There are lots of little touches that will please even the most picky of gamers and it's in my opinion that the charm of this game is easily one of its strongest components.
The objective of the game is to discover the backstories of each character through a series of illustrations unlocked by finding symbols on the walls of the cave. At the start of each game you select 3 characters to journey through the cave with, each with a unique level attributed to them. Some are fun, such as the Knight's level in-which you steal an amulet from a dragon and end up destroying the kingdom in the process, but some are just tedious, such as the Adventurer's level, filled with puzzles that give you no indication of how to solve them. Along the way you play through each character's origin story which involves puzzle solving, block pushing, item-using, and so on. It's just such a shame that the endings of each character (of which there are two for each), only involve still pictures and no sort of interactive elements. If you want to get the opposite ending, you have to play through the entire game again with no real changes to the levels. The gameplay of The Cave can best be described as "tedious", and for a game that depends on multiple playthroughs this is a big problem.
Sorry Ron, but this adventure just wasn't up to par.